wile e.'s house

the master bedroom closet

maybe shoji screens would make sense for our bedroom spaces--this conversion had to divide a space similarly to ours.

episode 5, in which wile e. considers the room in which one eats the road runner. er, the dining room, that is.

hi love to entertain. i cannot wait to convert our living room into a dining room--we haven't had a dining room for more than two years. in my old apartment, i threw dinner parties at least once a month. sometimes buffets served from the dining room table, but often really sit-down dinners, elegant and grown-up. either way, i heart my dining room.

i don't fancy the dining room having other functions, really. it does have some nice niches beside the decorative fireplace for some bookshelves, so it can certainly display books, but i don't want it to be primary storage or activity space, really.

really i just want it to be an elegant, modern, simple, clean space, one that transitions nicely between the kitchen and living room, as it lies between the two. i like that it's open to both rooms, and i like my existing furniture well enough to keep it. not what i'd choose again today if i had a do-over--it's 16 years old or so, and feels a bit dated--but it's perfectly workable with perhaps an update to the seat cushion fabric. glass top, curvy black wood frames--basic contemporary styling. definitely not midcentury, but i can keep it from clashing if i keep things simple, which is my natural tendency. our dishes are all asian-inspired and neutral in tone, a look that flows nicely with the midcentury and the contemporary as well as with the color schemes we have in mind. (oh, and bonus news for me on that front: smartboy did the voice of color color sense game, indulgent as he is of me, and guess what? his color collections recommendations were the same as mine. go figure.)

unfortunately, this room is painfully dark a lot of the time. it has one east-facing bay window, meaning it'll be dark when it's most used. and it has zero lighting installed. time for a good modern pendant lamp that takes compact fluorescent bulbs. i think the colors in here will be pretty simple--continuing the maple floors (which i've decided will be bellawood; not only are they what bob vila likes and otherwise seeming to be good quality, but they're made right outside williamsburg, virginia, where i lived for nine great years. i like their natural grade northern hard maple  in a medium-width plank.), the black wood of the dining set, neutral tones on the table top, probably a taupe on the walls. i want to strip the paint from the brick fireplace, which will warm the room, but mainly i like the food, candlelight, and photography on the walls to take center stage. the room already has beautiful wood blinds that i think will stay, though i may add some drapes to soften the look.

episode 4, in which wile e. considers the kitchen.

i'm a serious cook. i crave what some of my friends would call a trophy kitchen not because of its looks, but because some of what makes such a kitchen look like a trophy kitchen is materials and equipment that make sense for a serious cook.

the good news is that i'm also ridiculously practical. so although i've craved a sub-zero refrigerator and a viking range for as long as i can remember, consumer reports doesn't particularly like either(built-in refrigerators are, apparently, repair-prone, and the viking just doesn't score very well compared to the thermodor in its class). i'm a consumer reports junkie. and impossibly analytical and (if you can't tell) addicted to planning.

mostly i cook--prepping takes up the most space, then stovetop and related work. but i'd probably try more baking if my kitchen were amenable to it. we use the microwave, toaster oven, blender, and griddler  (a brilliant griddle, grill, and panini all in one from cuisinart) enough that i want them to have dedicated counter space.

since we won't be eating in front of the television in the living room any more, we'll need to talk about whether to eat in the now-adjacent dining room or to have some kind of seating in the kitchen for casual dining. it's really a lifestyle change to eat not in front of a television any more. good for us, i think, but smartboy isn't a talker. it should be interesting.

so the kitchen will need to be superorganized and uncluttered, with everything where i need to use it and easy to access. right now i really hate how difficult storage is, and how much stuff is either stacked inside other things (requiring a lot of time and clanging and potential breakage to get to things) or sitting on open shelving (requiring a lot of time and washing before i can use them). i cannot wait to have the right kind of cabinetry to have a place for everything and everything in its place, and no more junk taking up space on top of the island, which should be prep space.

i do like that the relevant parts are close--the refrigerator near the stove near the dishwasher near the sink near the island--and i love having a double sink (that's stainless steel) and a disposer. i wish the sink were a bit larger and that the faucet were higher and had a separate sprayer. i wish the refrigerator were larger and better organized--food spoils a lot because we can't see what we have. i really dislike the window treatments, and look forward to changing those posthaste. i like having the extra freezer, too, though i wish we made better use of the dead space above it somehow. i hate that i can't reach so much stuff that smartboy stores above the cabinets--i hope that we no longer have to store things up there any more. it's unsightly as well as inconvenient. the whole room just feels like it's a huge waste of space due to poor planning--a large room with lots of potential that just never was used wisely.

so my design priority is one: function. function function function. making it look good while it functions is entirely possible, but function is the big goal. i get angry and frustrated almost every time i'm in my kitchen because it doesn't work, and that's really hard for anyone, but i think especially for someone who used to cater, who is as passionate about food and cooking as i am. i also hope it will have a good flow and a little simple seating--bar stools are fine, or a banquette--for the folks who come in to chat while i'm cooking when we have dinner parties (oh, how i can't *wait* to have those again!).

the room has a huge set of bay windows with southern exposure, so i guess it gets afternoon sun. it's pretty nicely shaded by a big fat evergreen, though, so it's reasonably controlled. there's one strong sunbeam that comes in (i remember my cat, when she was alive, used to love lying in it), but most of the time it's shaded.

i'd love for the room to be bright, cheerful, clean, and modern. if i could feel like june cleaver in my kitchen, that'd be fab. i'm not quite settled on the color palette yet, though. the problem? flooring. i love the maple flooring that will be everywhere else on the first floor, but if i continue it into the kitchen, it will look weird with maple cabinetry. but what other cabinetry would look right? contrasting wood? not so much. but a synthetic material? not even. and another kind of flooring? well, it needs to be harder than oak to withstand dogs' nails and life, but it needs to be soft enough to be comfortable to stand on while cooking for a couple of hours (or longer) at a time. oh, and it can't be carpeting, because, well, it's a kitchen. one possibility: one of gerbert's recycled flooring surfaces, or some other recycled rubber surface. rubber is soft, easy to clean, durable, and green. and findable in a multitude of finishes and colors. since our architect does a lot of commercial and industrial work, he may be able to find us a good source. we'll see. just have to make sure it doesn't look *too* industrial.

if we do have furniture in this room, it's gotta be diner. period.

paint: probable, but no color choice yet. continuing some blues from the other rooms visible from here, but that's as close as i can get for now. i'd love a stainless steel backsplash. this room does need a little trim work, as do most of the rooms here. i want a new refrigerator, which will have to be energy efficient. fortunately, the kenmore elite trio model that i want is indeed. i'd also love a gas range, if that's possible--i am SO OVER cooking on this hateful ceramic electric cooktop. ugh! then, of course, there's the free-standing stove versus separate cooktop and dual oven question. it'd sure be nice to have two ovens...that'll depend on budget, i think--not because of the additional cost of the appliances themselves, but because of the additional cost in cabinetry changes and piping in gas lines differently. we'll see when we talk to lee.

we will also need a range hood. and new counter tops (solid surface, here we come! or concrete. but probably corian or something similar). and of course maple cabinetry (maybe from kraftmaid) with some nice brushed nickel hardware (maybe from myknobs.com?). and some much more modern window treatments. god, i hate these cafe curtains.

fortunately, we don't have to replace the dishwasher or disposer, which we bought new two years ago. the overhead lighting in here isn't bad, but the task lighting stinks. must get under-cabinet lights especially over the sink.

oh...speaking of sinks. how much would i love to have this 60-inch kohler countertop sink? look at the arc on that potfiller faucet! but $3400, even if it does replace a five-foot stretch of countertop...i bet not. no, i'm sure we'll go with your pretty standard double- or triple-basin sinks in both the kitchen and the wet bar on the second floor. it's okay. it's just a sink. besides, the big fancy trough sinks just take more water to fill when i need them filled (rare, but it happens), and that's wasteful. but as for the faucet? yeah. this baby is coming home with me, or something a lot like it. it's the kohler promaster kitchen faucet, and it's ada-compliant (a second goal of ours is to make the first floor as accessible as possible, especially as pittsburgh is an aging town). anyway, when i worked at camp lo these many years ago, we had these potfiller faucets in the kitchen (as does any commercial kitchen), and i simply adored them. have wanted one ever since.

episode 3, in which wile e. considers the family room.

we will do a lot in our living room (livicus roomicus). the house will allow for all of our just-come-over-for-the-evening entertaining spaces to remain on the first floor, so only we and longer-term guests will come up beyond that level. this will let us have a really nice sense of privacy upstairs--a true family room, with television, dogs, knitting, work, and whatever we really do all day left out without worry. i'm really excited about the potential this area has.

because of the conversion of this area--which is currently the tenants' main living area, including their kitchen, bathroom, laundry, study, dining room, and living room--there are lots of spaces and plumbing already in place. i'd previously been fretting about what to do about that kitchen, but in talking to my friend lotta yesterday, who'll be embarking on a similar mission with her husband-to-be in the not-too-distant future, i realized that we could leave a lot of that kitchen intact as a wet bar for snacking and casual entertaining. what a bonus!

that said, we do a lot in these areas:

• we watch a lot of television. a lot.
• i work, on my laptop while sitting on a sofa. a lot. sometimes it's stuff i do while watching tv.
• sometimes i knit or read while watching tv.
• in our current family room, which is adjacent to our kitchen, we eat. i doubt that'll happen any more, as the new family room will be on a different floor from the kitchen. but we may snack.
• guests will sleep, and i'm sure we'll nap.
• the dogs' crates may be in one of these rooms (there are two rooms, big open floor plan, that will combine to be the family room and my study, sort of). they'll eat in here, too, if that's the case.

so we'll want the rooms to be really comfortable and cozy, but not so cozy as to induce sleep while i'm working :) and they need to be well lit when we need light, but dimmed when we want to watch a romantic movie. i want the rooms to feel intimate but not cluttered, messy, or crowded.

my design priorities for these rooms are functionality and clean modernality, as usual. they have southern and eastern exposures, so light won't be a problem most of the day--indirectly through the kitchen that adjoins them (and will essentially become part of them), they even get western exposure. i don't actually ever remember going up there and not seeing it bathed in light (though we never go up at night).

i have found, with great gratitude and joy, a sectional sofa that beautifully evokes a midcentury modern aesthetic, with petite tapered wood legs, a low profile, just the right height of armrests, and just the right lines. the cushiones could be less rounded, but it's slipcovered, and with two big black furry dogs, that makes up for a lot. it's room and board's jasper ($$$$). we love a sectional, because it allows all of us to lounge at the same time. make no mistake--all of us lounge at the same time. it's just that the dogs have a very different idea of personal space than we do. although it's shown in white, i wouldn't buy a white sofa even slipcovered. not for my family room, where the dogs lounge regularly. no way. i think the color palette on the second floor will be warmer than on the first. i could see this in a mossy green or deep crimson (though i've owned a deep red sofa before and might just be over that). if in green, our color palette for the room would probably look something like this --continuing the same maple floor we had throughout the first floor, with the cream color on the walls and the blue and taupe as accents in furnishings and such. i think those achieve the fairly modern, soothing-but-not-sleep-inducing mood we'd be going for. in addition to the sofa, we have a couple of midcentury modern armchairs to add to the mix that are curbside finds and tossaways just waiting in the basement for reupholstering. we'll need a new coffee table; i do adore the nelson bench , but i'll find a similar item on ebay or at a yard sale rather than pay the $600-700 it takes to buy one new. topped with a tray, great for snacks, but mostly, i just adore how it looks. something about the slats emphasizing the horizontal--the same thing i love about prairie architecture and stacked-stone walls--and the contrast between the blond maple top and black legs. and those clean lines. yum-o.

those walls have the textured plaster i so would love to have smooth, but again--not sure i'm interested in undoing that. we'll see how much remedial work is required. if a lot, worth undoing. if not, i'll let it be, most likely. and we'll need some slim trim boards; i don't think there is any up there right now.

i cannot WAIT to tear up every inch of carpeting up there. it reeks of cat pee and god knows what else. replace it all with beautiful maple hardwood. i drool to think of it.

there is a decorative fireplace up there. i'm not really sure how that'll fit in with the whole midcentury thing; i can't picture right now how ornately queen anne it is. that's a plan that will have to wait. i'm not tearing anything original out--i'm not a destructorenovator.

we do have lots and lots of shelving already, fortunately. that's at least one thing we won't have to purchase (which is good, because he's going to flip when he sees the price of that sectional i want). i'm not sure what to do about media storage. i love the $15 midcentury modern buffet we bought at an estate sale this spring, but i'd love to use it in the new dining room for serveware storage. but maybe when the kitchen has been redone, we'll just have room for all of that stuff in there, and there won't be any need for storage in the dining room. so for a while, at least, i suppose it will continue to serve its function.

the cool thing will be that i can get creative with window treatments, because there are few opportunities for privacy invasion from the second-floor windows, as i recall. woot woot! as for lighting, i have no idea until i get up there what kinds of fixtures there are or aren't. and our best decorating is always framing smartboy's prints.

episode 2, in which wile e. considers the new living room.

the one room that will require some walls coming out is currently a storage room. it's the room that, when they converted domicilicus potentialus from a single-family home into a duplex, they split in half, basically, leaving us with an 8'x14' study (much of which is actually occupied by a closet) and the tenants with a staircase and tiny first-floor foyer. when we tear out the walls (including the closet), we should end up with a 17x14ish living room (minus the footprint of the staircase up to the second floor. not a huge room, thanks to that staircase, and it'll also be the front entry, but i think it'll be okay. (what's currently our living room will become our dining room. we don't have one right now, and i sooooo miss having one, as much as i love to entertain.)

mostly what i think we'll use that room for is how we used to use our living room when we used to have a separate living room and dining room and used to have people over a lot: we would entertain a lot and people could hang out in there or in the adjoining dining room or in the kitchen until dinner was served. i don't know whether we'll be able to fit a television in there as well, though that'd sure be cool--we love having people over to watch movies and things like the olympics, the oscars, and stuff like that. we really can't do that now, because our current living room is so jam-packed with work stuff and dog crates!

it'll also need to serve as an entry room, making a great first impression on people and welcoming them into the house. i don't think we need to keep that closet there, because there's a coat closet right behind it in the hallway that'll be open to it if we take the closet out (i hope hope hope we can).

it'll also be the room we cut through to get upstairs, which puts it in danger of getting cluttered if we aren't careful. you know--oh, i just brought in the mail, but i'm not going upstairs *now*...or, i want to take off my shoes and work clothes, but i'm not going upstairs *now*...yeah. potential for disaster there. maybe we'll keep a laundry basket at the foot of the stairs for my bad habits :) it's pretty important to me to keep this space uncluttered, clean, and welcoming.

the room faces east, so that side of the house gets brilliant morning sun, but it's shaded by the front porch, so really it doesn't get much direct light at all.

so we won't have space for different zones--private conversations and group gatherings--but that's okay. private conversations at our parties usually take place in the kitchen anyway :) so we'll put an appropriately scaled sofa (maybe the ikea lessbo we already own, but maybe something nicer) and a chair or two (of which we have a couple of midcentury moderns awaiting space, thankfully, and refinishing and reupholstering--some curbside finds and hand-me-downs collected over the years--in addition to my already reupholstered one), a coffee table (time to refinish the midcentury one i got on the outing with vickie from years a-go-go), and an area rug (there's a good ikea purchase) atop new hardwood floors. and there we go: greeting guests in a midcentury modern room, nearly completely furnished already. i have a color scheme in mind, too, thanks to pittsburgh paints' very cool voice of color tool: nordic lights palette.  the holly glen (a medium blue) isn't a bad match for the color of my already upholstered chair (it's much greener than that, but the tone is right), so i'm thinking walls in cosmic rays (an icy blue) with accents in prairie dust (a grayish taupe). lovely. i want a modern, soothing mood, and i think those colors really achieve that. plus they work reasonably well with the modern furniture that we already have :) budget and all, you know.

the walls in there do have a textured plaster finish that i'd love to get rid of, but i'm not sure i want to get rid of it badly enough to worry about it. if there are cracks or water spots that are going to require repair after we deal with structural repairs, or we have other work to do to the walls after getting rid of the drop ceiling (oh, did i neglect to mention that little eyesore?), well, then we'll have to think about tackling getting rid of the plaster finish. otherwise, not so much into major cosmetic wall prep. buy some paint and be done. and trim--we need base boards and some kind of simple crown moldings to finish off the edges.

i've only just started investigating hardwood flooring. i love maple, the very pale blond wood,  and so that's what i'm hoping for. a nice 3/4-inch thick hardwood in every room. but i'm not sure what to do about the kitchen--you know, maple floor, maple cabinets? but that's not what this post is about. it's about the living room. and in the living room, maple flooring. yum. (i should add that i am investigating bamboo--if it's the green answer, it's in, baby.)

we do need some window coverings in there, but i haven't seen anything that inspires me yet. something that is easy to keep clean and dust-free (i loathe mini-blinds for this reason), allows for complete privacy (it's a window straight in from the front porch), and fits in aesthetically with the midcentury modern look of the rest of the room. this will take some thought.

oh, and the other little purchase will be a replacement light fixture--aesthetically pleasing and something that takes compact fluorescent bulbs. again: not seeing anything yet that i love, but i have time. i'm sure i will.

and we'll frame some of our favorites of smartboy's photographs to finish off the room. doesn't sound like a lot of decorating money, which is good, because it'll be a relatively high-dollar room to do structurally (removing the drop ceiling, plastering the old ceiling, probably remedial work on the portions of the walls that were concealed by the drop ceiling, tearing out the walls, and of course installing subfloors, all before we can begin any of this other stuff).